Colin Steer, Associate Editor - Opinion

Some commentators in the print and electronic media have suggested that political rallies and annual party conferences serve little usefulness and, therefore, should be scrapped.

We should rely more on televised debates, they suggest, where ideas can be discussed 'rationally', and voters be enabled to make up their minds based on discussions about important matters of the moment without the distraction of carnival-like jam sessions etc., etc.

In reality, political rallies are no more useless than sterile televised debates, where hardly anything useful is ever said or discussed. Our televised debates in the past have yielded great intellectual post-event analyses about who looked com-fortable and who didn't; who won the debate and who lost; who was more telegenic and so on. They are of no greater value than a jam session in a public square attended by the great unwashed.

Energise the foot soldiers

But, more importantly, our political rallies provide a useful element in our democracy often overlooked by our media talking heads and wannabe kingmakers. The rallies serve to energise the foot soldiers who play a far more crucial role in Jamaica maintaining some semblance of democracy than our apathetic chattering classes.

Typically, it is the same heavy-set women who flock to the rallies who will volunteer their services in the thick of battle on election day and at polling stations. They are the ones who will plant their ample posteriors on the ballot boxes to ensure they do not disappear under the 'watchful eyes' of police escorts or are tampered with en route to the counting centres. It is these mainly aggressive women who are sometimes unafraid to confront the crooks who turn up to steal or stuff ballots in boxes. The fact that they may get a few dollars in exchange for their work is no more scandalous than middle-class partisans getting jobs or contracts because of their political connections and antecedents.

The rallies also bring a sense of fun and camaraderie - they are morale-boosting events that fuel the passion for work.

Sure, Jamaica's politics is in a mess, but the crookery that has undermined our political process does not reside primarily among people who attend political rallies. Our educated middle-class profes-sionals can be as irrational and rabidly partisan as any inner-city 'dads' or 'hottie' dashing from his or her yard to big-up, hug up or greet the party leader. When our middle classes keep silent in the face of some of the most-barefaced public thievery, corruption and acts of injustice, they do far more damage to Jamaica's political process than any hottie in a blond wig and T-shirt several sizes too small dancing on top of a bus.

A good laugh

Also, debates do not generally change people's perceptions of the participants. Viewers and listeners hear what they want to hear. Bias, like beauty, is in the minds and eyes of the observer.

And we need not be killjoys - there is a utilitarian value in laughter. I can still see in my mind's eye the unrestrained joy on the faces of Labourites as they tramped around Half-Way Tree Park some years ago, candles in hand, swaying and singing as they prepared to leave the area after some rousing speeches; I can still see the thousands of confident Comrades dancing in the rain or under umbrellas in a jam-packed Falmouth square as a Michael Manley-led entourage neared during the run-up to the 1989 election; Or the women who sat under a shop piazza basking in the after-glow of a tour commenting on how "Mass Eddie look like young bwoi" as he passed through certain sections of Kingston in the 1980 campaign.

Ban rallies for televised debates? Bah humbug!